


Fairytale of New York

by lonelywalker



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean and Scott spend two Christmas Eves together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairytale of New York

1.

It had been around August in the first year of Xavier’s school that Jean had started to worry about Christmas. She had known that this was a strange thing with which to be preoccupied, given that the Professor was still mainly concerned about giving them lectures on sunburn and proper hydration, but Jean had learned through experience to think ahead.

She hadn’t wanted to go home for Christmas. This much had been certain. She hadn’t been entirely sure _why_ it was certain. The Professor would probably have smiled kindly and asked whether, perhaps, it was because she was afraid of what her parents might think or what they might ask at the dinner table. This was obviously nonsense, Jean had told herself, because she had been able to bamboozle her parents with evasive answers since the time she was five and a half (it had been an incident she was now embarrassed to recall, involving a Barbie and some pliers). Besides, she had doubted that there was anything they really wanted to know about her time at the school. They were probably the one set of parents on earth who would rather know about acne and period pains and boy trouble than their daughter’s actual studies.

The problem was that, even though she hadn’t wanted to spend Christmas at home, she had still wanted the Christmas experience. There _should_ be a tree, and tinsel, and presents, and stupid holiday songs, and if not actual snow then at least some kind of vague expectation that there might be some on the way. But the very idea seemed anathema to the school. After all, they weren’t there in order to be normal. Jean had looked around for photos or other evidence of past Christmases and found nothing. Why should she? Erik didn’t celebrate Christmas – he didn’t even seem very interested in Hanukkah – and she could hardly imagine the Professor mournfully wearing a Santa hat and eating turkey all on his own.

She had tried to ask Scott about it, but Scott had been at that age (later, she would realize that he was _always_ at that age) when any event more than a week away was obviously never going to happen and she was being downright odd for even thinking about it. Jean had brought him a calendar and thrust a finger at December 25th, in order to try to convince him that it really did exist, but he had just muttered something about reindeer and wandered off, scratching at the bandages over his eyes. Obviously all the evidence in the world wasn’t going to convince him. At the time, she had cursed boys in general, not stopping to think about why Scott was apparently the only child in the Western world not at all enthusiastic about Christmas.

So, in the end, she had forgotten about it. At least, she had forgotten in the sense that she had pushed it to the back of her mind. Although she had known constantly that it was there (in the same way that she knew Scott’s GI Joe was lodged behind the sofa), she was determined not to be concerned. In the end, however, she had rescued the GI Joe and returned him to Scott’s room. Scott had denied that the toy was his, arguing that it had been one of Hank’s experiments, and anyway he was far too old for that kind of thing. The entire affair had made her want to slam doors, but at least it had taken her mind off that other childhood experience neither of them, regrettably, was too old to experience.

On Christmas Eve that year, it had snowed in Westchester, and the weight of those slight delicate flakes had brought down half the power lines in Salem Center. The lights had gone out before it really became dark, and Erik had set about striking matches and finding candles. The Professor and Hank had been away at some kind of political conference, and had been expected back the next morning. Jean had sat on the carpeted floor of the TV room, feeling the strange heat of candlelight around them, and had worried about knocking over candles.

“Do you ever think,” she had asked, watching Erik squint at the titles of books in the shimmering darkness, “of helping them out?”

He found the text he had been looking for. “And then our problem would not be a romantic evening by candlelight, but rather a terrified repair crew wondering why a man can restore power lines without touching them.” Erik had smiled. “If nothing else, Charles would disapprove. Let’s try to keep him happy, shall we?”

“Aren’t they wooden anyway?” Scott had piped up. He had been sitting with his back to the wall, mostly oblivious to the darkness, but afraid of setting the place ablaze with a mistaken movement. Jean, at least, had been able to see the positions of the candles. But then physically touching them had been the least of her problems.

“Indeed.” Erik had dipped his head again, reading from the pages in front of him, but Jean had seen the flicker of a knowing glance he had thrown her. It had been the subtext of a conversation Scott couldn’t quite grasp, either for his lack of sight or his lack of years. At least, she had _thought_ she had seen it. Expressions had been indistinct in the hazy light. When she had reached out to make sure, Erik’s eyes had held a very real rebuke. The contents of his mind had been very much out of bounds.

Scott had never been able to feel her looking into his head. She hadn’t done it often. She hadn’t needed to. Scott hadn’t been the type of person with secrets. She could have found out everything about him in a few seconds. She had known everything just by being around him. He had broadcast thoughts about action figures and football scores without her even having to prod. The people with the real secrets in that house had been, of course, the very ones who would never let her in. Maybe, she had thought, when she was older, she would be able to figure out a way to slip past Erik’s defences. He hadn’t been talented in that area, after all. He had just studied really hard, and the Professor had taught him a few things. But she had been the real A-grade student.

“What are you reading?” she had asked, mainly to be polite. She had known each of the books by then, and their covers, and positions, and contents.

“Linguistics,” Erik had said, without lifting his head.

Never in all her months relating to Erik as a student, surrogate daughter, and friend, had Jean managed to figure out when he was being deliberately rude, and when he was testing her. It would have been polite to give some kind of explanation, to start a conversation amongst the three of them. Particularly in the dark. Particularly on Christmas Eve. Particularly when there had been nothing else to do, and the _scritch-scritch-scratch_ of Scott’s nails against bandages had been beginning to get annoying. But then, she had known that Erik had spent years in the company of a telepath much more proficient than she might ever be, and she had suspected that he had known what she really wanted to ask.

Jean had given in. “ _Why_ are you reading that?”

The change was immediate. Erik had smiled, slipped a bookmark between the pages, and passed the book over to her. The binding had been leather, worn and stained. Jean had touched it, smooth beneath her fingers, and wondered about all the sweat and spilled wine that had gone into it over the years. She had had to squint to see the words in the candlelight. It hadn’t made much difference. “I don’t understand this. It’s German, isn’t it?”

There had been a very audible groan from Scott, who was anticipating another lecture, and not enjoying the concept very much.

“You can go upstairs if you like, Scott,” Erik had said. “The dark won’t make much difference. But I expect to find you in bed when I check later.”

Scott had scrambled to his feet, muttered some good nights, and wandered off up the creaky wooden staircase. It was only once the footsteps ceased to be audible that Jean had realized that they had both been waiting for Scott to be out of earshot.

Erik had cleared his throat. “ _Deutsche Grammatik_. A German Grammar.”

Jean had felt as if she had to be missing something. “But… you speak German. Why do you need to read about German grammar?” She had been faintly worried that he expected her to learn all of it, with its faint type and strange letters.

“You should be glad Charles isn’t here to hear you say that. He may decide to give you a refresher course in past participles.”

That, at least, was a joke. Jean had opened up the book, ever the top student, trying to find some kind of solution on her own. “But you’re not at school anymore.”

He had smiled. “At least one thing in this book should be familiar to you… Although from a radically different context. I assume it is a worldwide phenomenon for mothers to scare their children to death with tales of Rumpelstiltskin?”

Jean had caught his eye. Well. She wasn’t going to be confounded by that sort of a riddle. “Scott might be scared. Not me.”

“You’re underestimating him. He navigates a world of darkness without a care in the world.”

“Well maybe he should have some cares.” She had turned the page. The author’s name had been given, in faded capitals. “Grimm. That’s it, right, like the fairytales?”

“Yes, and I am sure Herr Professor is very heartened to find a young girl reading his less well known but certainly most interesting work.”

It hadn’t looked very interesting. Jean had suspected that, even if she could somehow dip into Erik’s mind and learn the German language in a matter of minutes, it would be just as dry and boring as the English textbooks the Professor had in his office.

“Have you ever thought,” Erik had asked, “that your life might be a little like a fairytale?”

“Um. No,” Jean had said. She hadn’t had to think about the answer so much as whether she wanted to tell Erik to stop being so esoteric and just restore the damn lights so they could watch Christmas movies. Unfortunately this had also made her wonder whether the Professor, in a similar situation, would have just cut to the chase and changed Erik’s mind for him, and that idea gave her the creeps. Mainly because she had thought it was kind of cool. “Have you?”

He had shrugged. “It depends on the fairytale. Mine would never be made by Disney, certainly. But look at yourself, at Scott, at all of us. Poor people, set apart by extraordinary gifts, and condemned by society.”

“I don’t think Snow White was a mutant,” Jean had pointed out.

Erik laughed a little at that. “She had extraordinary beauty. And beauty is a gift… a power, in a way. People felt threatened by that power, just as they do your abilities. People are afraid of that power.”

He had had a point. “So I’ll stay away from dwarves and poisoned apples. Thanks for the advice.”

“My pleasure.” He had reached out and carefully taken back the book. “The Grimm brothers only collected fairytales as something of a hobby. They were very intelligent, renowned academics. _This_ was their other great contribution to the modern world. And, as coincidence might have it, it is very relevant to our modern day fairytale.”

“They wrote about mutants?”

“They wrote about _mutation_.”

Jean still hadn’t been convinced. “In a book on German grammar? In…” – she had looked it up – “1882? I think I was following you better when we were talking about Rumpelstiltskin.”

The telephone had rung out then, sharp and unexpectedly loud in a house deprived of television and music. Erik had levered himself up from the floor and reached out for the receiver. He had gestured towards the book. “You’d be surprised,” he had said.

 

2.

It was years later, on another, very different Christmas Eve, that Jean’s thoughts returned to the night of the power cut, when ghosts and goblins must have danced in the dark recesses of the mansion. She was clearing an uncooperatively large amount of snow from the driveway, aided by a shovel and, to a much lesser extent, by Scott, who kept blowing on his hands and pointing. _Our fearless leader_ , she thought, and dumped a load of snow onto his feet.

Erik was gone, now, and hadn’t returned for the last two Christmas holidays. There was no guarantee – and certainly no expectation – that he would appear for this one. Jean knew that Christmas to him was just another day, anyway. His lack of interest in coming home on December 25th was no more remarkable than on any other day. At least, she told herself that. Hank was a different matter. He was expected but, more likely than not, would also fail to be eating turkey with them on Christmas Day. He had an assistant’s job at the Capitol, and was trying his best not to trod on any toes. Putting in his time photocopying and running errands in deepest winter might not be his idea of a good time, but it might earn him some favours to cash in the future.

Tomorrow there would be a traditional Christmas dinner, with party hats and decorations and broken presents and long involved arguments about how many vegetables they really had to eat. There would be a tree, and wrapping paper, and maybe even some carols if she prodded the kids hard enough. And, despite all the memories in the world, and all the goodwill, there would be an empty place. She doesn’t set it for him anymore, and even if he were still at the mansion he would be off tinkering in some corner far from the party, but he’s still not there.

But there were others, now, others who could very definitely be out there wielding shovels and trying to help rather than watching Muppets videos in the warmth of the living room and dorms. _Dorms_ , Jean thought with a snort. _We have dorms now. We have **dorms** full of kids and not one of them is out here helping._ Maybe if she were a little better at the telepathic tricks, she could bellow in their ears to get them out here on the double. Particularly that Drake boy. This was probably all his doing. Jean ladled more snow onto Scott’s shoes for emphasis.

“Hey!” Scott jumped a foot backwards, skidding on the ice before coming to a halt at a reasonably safe distance. He lifted a hand to press his glasses a little more firmly onto his nose. “What was that for?”

Jean laughed. “It was a lot more fun when you couldn’t see.”

“Yeah?” Scott shrugged. “Well a lot of things were more fun back then. You know… Toy soldiers, action men, picking on girls…”

“Tell me one time you ever picked on me, Scott Summers.”

Scott’s eyebrows lifted a little at that. “Okay, you have a shovel, so I’m pleading the fifth on that one.”

She grinned. “Scott, do you remember when there weren’t dorms here? When we just had your bedroom and mine and…”

“We still have bedrooms,” Scott interrupted, and Jean was fairly sure why. “Just, you know, some of us have had to share.”

“Good thing you didn’t wind up sharing with Ororo then, huh?” Jean winked. She could do that. Scott sadly remained in the realm of the wink-impaired. Come to think of it, where _was_ Ororo? They could do with a thaw round about now. “There was that one Christmas when the lights went out and the Professor was away…”

Scott reached out for the shovel. “Here. If you’re not doing it I will.”

Jean let him take it; watched him attack the packed snow for a moment. “…And Erik was telling us about fairytales.”

“He was telling you about fairytales.” Scott stabbed at the snow with the edge of the shovel, liberated an ice brick, threw it onto the grass by the driveway. “Just his usual political bullshit, Jean. He’d still be doing it now if he were here, and you know it. He’d be turning Cinderella and Prince Charming into mutant freedom fighters, and your regular joe into an ogre.”

“That wasn’t the point, Scott.”

 _Crunch. Swivel. Thump._ “Yeah? I was twelve, Jean. I wasn’t an idiot. You know what he’s like. Why do you think I left early?”

Jean looked at him with a determinedly blank stare. “I thought you went to find your Eagle-Eye GI Joe.”

“Right.” Scott planted the shovel in the snow, and somehow, behind the glasses, she could tell that his eyes expected an answer. “So something’s bothering you. Did you get something out of Magneto’s propaganda session, then?”

She shrugged, then, and looked away like the embarrassed little girl she had once been. When the Professor, or Erik, had asked her what was worrying her all those years ago in the run up to Christmas, she would mutter something about algebra and then bombard them with mathematical questions. She had a feeling that that tactic was unlikely to work with Scott. “I was just thinking that we never really manage to be a family at Christmas. There’s always something missing.”

“Well, we’re having a real one this year,” Scott said diplomatically. “There’s a tree and everything.”

“There’s always _someone_ missing, Scott.” She knew he understood that she didn’t mean Hank. “You know, that night, we talked about the Grimm brothers, those men who collected old fairytales from all around Europe. It turns out that Jacob Grimm also wrote a German grammar. He was a very distinguished linguist.”

Jean could already feel Scott’s mind wandering towards his motorbike and mince pies. “Um,” he said, frowning. “And?”

“Grimm discovered one of the most amazing fairytales of all… the first Germanic sound shift.”

“Yeah…” Scott said. “Needs a catchier title.”

Jean manfully resisted the urge to throw a snowball at him. “It was the first time anyone had ever documented a systematic sound change in language – the evolution of a language over centuries. Language mutation, if you like. Grimm’s Law was the start of a revolution in linguistics and the start of serious study in the field.”

Scott nodded. “Okay. Sounds like an interesting lecture for next week… but why was Magneto telling you all about this in the first place?”

“Oh, Scott.” Jean rebuked him softly. “It’s Christmas. Everyone needs a fairytale. Even a sad little mutant girl who really wants turkey and lights and an angel on the tree.”

Scott half-heartedly shoveled another pile. “I still don’t think it’s a very good one. You should’ve asked me. I would’ve read you Rapunzel or something.”

She punched his arm. “Well I think it’s a _great_ one. The best one, as a matter of fact.”

He turned. “And why’s that?”

“Because, Scott Summers…” Jean sighed and gave up, reaching over to grab his frozen hand. “Come on, let’s go round up some kids and make a snowman. It’s Christmas, after all. Anyway, John could clear this away in a minute.”

Scott squeezed her hand and let her lead him back towards the mansion. “Yeah, and all the Professor’s plants too.”

“He means well.”

“Uh huh.” Scott’s tone suggested anything but agreement. “So what was Erik trying to tell you back then?”

 _Erik_. She smiled, and looked away so that Scott wouldn’t see her smiling. It was so easy to relapse into that frame of mind of long ago, when there were four of them, and they were family. For a moment she was happy that Scott had forgotten to be the leader, had forgotten who was the enemy, and had simply remembered those days when, instead of being heroes, they had been children listening to stories of far, far away.

Jean held Scott’s hand a little tighter, stopped him in his tracks, and kissed him. “He was trying to tell me that there would be a happy ending,” she said, and although she was smiling, her voice betrayed her.

Scott looked into her eyes. “There will be,” he said. “I promise.”

She wasn’t sure that she believed him. But, for the moment, it was nice to think that perhaps she did.

Jean stood on the tips of icy toes, and reached up to kiss him again.


End file.
